Sir Ridley Scott has enjoyed a long and illustrious career, one that extends all the way back to "Alien" and "Blade Runner" (two of his absolute best) and continues to the historical epic "Napoleon," which is enjoying a theatrical run before AppleTV+.
The long-awaited sequel to Scott’s Oscar-winning "Gladiator" has gone through multiple iterations over the years, many of which we break down here, and during a recent conversation, the director gave more details to the opening scene he had crafted that would have used original "Gladiator" star, Russell Crowe.
Ridley Scott was a guest on CinemaBlend’s official podcast, ReelBlend, to talk all things "Napoleon." And towards the end of the conversation, we brought up "Gladiator 2," knowing that the director was in the middle of his shoot. We mentioned the fact that there have been numerous versions of "Gladiator 2" available for people, and brought up the ones that once included Russell Crowe. As you likely will recall, Crowe’s character Maximus dies in the arena, having faced down Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). But Scott figured out how to bring Crowe back, and once envisioned a "Gladiator 2" movie that opened differently.
The long-awaited sequel to Scott’s Oscar-winning "Gladiator" has gone through multiple iterations over the years, many of which we break down here, and during a recent conversation, the director gave more details to the opening scene he had crafted that would have used original "Gladiator" star, Russell Crowe.
Ridley Scott was a guest on CinemaBlend’s official podcast, ReelBlend, to talk all things "Napoleon." And towards the end of the conversation, we brought up "Gladiator 2," knowing that the director was in the middle of his shoot. We mentioned the fact that there have been numerous versions of "Gladiator 2" available for people, and brought up the ones that once included Russell Crowe. As you likely will recall, Crowe’s character Maximus dies in the arena, having faced down Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). But Scott figured out how to bring Crowe back, and once envisioned a "Gladiator 2" movie that opened differently.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I know, just to put a time stamp on this interview, you're in the middle of filming Gladiator
00:04right now.
00:05And that's a movie that went through several different versions of what it was going to
00:08be.
00:09And to me, one of the most fascinating that it didn't end up being was following Maximus
00:12into the afterlife.
00:13And I'm just sort of curious if you were ever involved with it at that point and how much
00:17of the Maximus into the afterlife that fascinated you, what that story would have been.
00:22Nick Cave wrote the script.
00:25But I had the idea, I knew how to bring him back through a portal, back to the real world.
00:33I'm not going to tell you what it is because somebody will steal it.
00:37So that script is out there somewhere.
00:39Yeah, yeah.
00:40No, I have it.
00:41I talked to Nick every other day for about a month as he was writing it.
00:46And so I said, we can bring him back this way.
00:49And what I want to do is start the film in sticks on the edge of the ocean.
00:54And you see this warrior wandering in armor, and it's Maximus wandering, looking for where
01:00he's going to go next.
01:01Wow.
01:02That's cool.
01:03That's amazing.
01:04That's the same one.